


(manage me) im a mess

by transzoemurphy



Category: Dear Evan Hansen - Pasek & Paul/Levenson
Genre: Anxiety Disorder, Based off of something that happened to me, Closeted, Crying, Dermatillomania, Gay Rights, Gen, HoH Jared, M/M, Panic Attack, Presentation, Sabrina and Alana are gfs, Sky as Jared, Takes place in Texas, breakdown - Freeform, i guess, i never write Evan's pov this is difficult difficult lemon difficult, mentions of police brutality and racism, ok mostly. minus the gayest stuff, theres a mention of rape btw be careful, this is autobiographical, vent - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-16
Updated: 2019-06-16
Packaged: 2020-05-12 23:27:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,222
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19239235
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/transzoemurphy/pseuds/transzoemurphy
Summary: Evan has a panic attack when he has to present in front of the class





	(manage me) im a mess

**Author's Note:**

> based off of real events. MY real events. im suffering

Evan wasn't nervous about his English final.  
For their final, they'd gotten to either write a speech or an essay. Naturally, Evan chose to write an essay, because there was no way in hell that he was going to give a speech. He'd like to thank both God and Jesus for that, and he was Jewish. He didn't even believe in Jesus.  
He took his seat in the corner of the room between Sabrina and Jared, dropped his essay on the desk, and dropped his bag down on the ground.  
"I got four hours of sleep," he greeted.  
"Oh, mood," Jared said.  
"Oof," Sabrina said. "Do you want a bit of my Mountain Dew?" She nodded towards the huge bottle of Mountain Dew sitting in front of her.  
"Yeah, sure," Evan responded, pulling his legs up to sit cross-legged. He may not know how to sit in chairs, but Jared was worse: his chair was currently backwards, and he still managed to get one leg up on the table and the other crossed in front of him. He was drawing on his leg with a set of markers he had out. What a disaster. Evan smiled over at him.  
Sabrina reached into her bag and pulled out a cup (where did she even have space for that?) and poured it to the top before sliding it over to Evan. "Gamers, get y'all's juice."  
Evan shook his head fondly and stared down at his essay. He'd done it on why it should be illegal to refuse to let gay couples and couples with trans people go to their school's prom together. It was a problem in Texas, home of the homophobic cowboys, but he happened to know that his English teacher was a lesbian, so he felt safe letting her read his essay.  
The bell rang, and Ms. Towers asked, "Any volunteers to go first?"  
Sara was out of her seat in a second, with a mumbled "Gotta get this over with."  
"Sara, yes, you may go first," Ms. Towers said jokingly, as Sara was already completely ready. "Ladies, gentlemen, everyone else, quiet down."  
The class shifted in their seats and quiet down, and Sara started her speech with a sudden, powerful, "What if you were raped?"  
_Jesus,_ Evan thought, _She knows how to capture attention._  
"What if your sister, your friend, your girlfriend was raped? And what if that resulted in a pregnancy?"  
It was then that he realised that she was going to be talking about abortion. Evan hoped she got a good grade, because god, he'd be shaking from head to toe trying to give that speech.  
After Sara, a couple more people went, one talking about gun control, one talking about video games causing violence, one talking about women's rights, and Zoe did hers on sibling and friend abuse, and then Evan realised that half these people had chosen to do the essay.  
"Jared?" Evan asked between presentations. "If they did an essay, why are they speaking up there?"  
Jared shrugged. "Maybe because they want to, I don't know. I did a speech, so."  
He turned to Sabrina. "Do you know if we have to go up there even if we did an essay?"  
"I think so," she said. "I'm going up there, and I did an essay."  
"Oh, fuck," Evan said.  
The next speech was about marijuana but Evan wasn't focused on it. He heard the ocean crashing against his ears.  
If he went up there and explained his essay, everyone would figure out that he was gay. And in Texas, where the f slur was used like punctuation, that would not end well for him. Especially since he was already known for talking a lot in class and not being able to hold a conversation with anyone, ever.  
Really, though, shoutout to Sabrina and Jared for being able to cope with him.  
"I can't give a speech," Evan whispered when the boy in front ended his speech.  
"It's okay," Sabrina said. "You'll do great."  
Evan shook his head and started picking at a bump on his upper arm.  
Two more people came and went and by now Evan's arm was a mess of blood and torn skin.  
Sabrina went up.  
"I can't do it," he said again.  
She gave her speech, shaking slightly the whole time, but she gave it. Evan clapped as hard as he could for her.  
Nine. Ten. Eleven. Twelve. There were twenty people in his class and each speech was about three minutes long, and they had been there for 40 minutes, and had another 50 to go, so if each speech took seven minutes, he wouldn't have to go.  
He was screwed.  
While he was doing this mental math, another kid's speech on marijuana came and went. Apparently teenagers really liked talking about weed.  
Six more and then him.  
Payton did her speech on banning books.  
Jared went up. He was shaking quite a bit, but he cleared his throat, and his voice came out steady. "No offence, but I don't think the colour of my skin should mean cops can get off scot-free if they shoot me."  
Evan shot an "I love you" sign up at him, and Jared smiled shakily.  
"Living as a person of colour in America, I see a lot of institutionalised racism that goes unnoticed. Like the way I'm less likely to get good scholarships, because I'm less likely to do well on the PSATs, because I live in a poor neighbourhood and because you need to pay for PSAT practices, and people of colour are kept in poverty." He paused again, shifted from one foot to the other. "But no offence. It's hard to talk about hate crimes against non-white people when your audience is mostly white."  
Alana, sitting on the other side of Sabrina, tapped her chest with her fist, and Evan smiled weakly at her.  
Jared shifted from one foot to the other. "My aunt was killed by the police and the cop who killed her didn't get any jail time. She was murdered for not responding to the cop's demands. My aunt was deaf. She didn't know they were speaking to her."  
Jared reached up and messed with his hearing aid, something Evan knew he did when he was nervous.  
But he got through the speech. At one point he had to stop and take a breath, and at least three separate times he made some comment meant to pacify his white classmates, but he got through it.  
"You did great," Evan whispered.  
"You okay?"  
No. Evan's eyes filled with tears of fear and he gave the other boy two thumbs-up.  
Ms. Towers began pulling names out of a bucket. Four more.  
"Sammy?"  
Sammy got up, did his speech on cyberbullying, and sat back down. Evan was now rocking anxiously. Whenever Ms. Towers reached for the bucket, he slumped down in his seat.  
He wasn't going to cry. He would be fine. He could go up there and give the speech. Or he could walk out of the room and take a 40 on the assignment.  
"Evan," Sabrina whispered, "You can go up and tell Ms. Towers you can't do it."  
"I'll read your speech for you," Jared offered. It made his heart hurt. He was shaking his whole time up there but offered to do it again just for Evan? God, what an angel. Evan didn't deserve him.  
He shook his head. "No, no, I don't want to, um, to interrupt." His voice shook.  
"Caitlyn?"  
Caitlyn got up there, gave her speech on public surveillance. Evan's fingers danced over his skin, tearing at any bumps he could find.  
"Evan," Ms. Towers called.  
Like he was a goddamn cartoon character, Evan burst into tears.  
He buried his head in his arms, and Sabrina tried to comfort him, while Jared just rested the tips of his fingers on Evan's arm, enough for comfort, but not enough to be considered gay.  
Evan kept his tears quiet. He always did. Somewhere off in the distance he heard Ms. Towers say, "Ryan, why don't you go?"  
"It's okay," Sabrina mumbled.  
Evan nodded, his face flushed with shame. "Yeah. Yeah. I'm s- I'm sorry. I need a minute."  
Sabrina tore out a bit of paper and scrawled something down. _It's okay. I believe in you._  
Ryan gave his speech. Evan didn't hear any of it.  
Evan was a mess of tears and snot. God, this was embarrassing. He hadn't broken down like this in front of people since second grade.  
He wiped his face on the collar of his shirt and dried his eyes, trying to focus on anything other than his anxiety.  
Jared passed over a paper: nine squares with an X in the middle.  
Evan drew an O in the corner and Jared blocked the one above it. Evan took the one next to it, and Jared took the top corner, trying to get a diagonal in. Evan blocked the corner, getting three-in-a-row.  
Jared smiled at him. Evan tried to smile back.  
Ms. Towers came over to Evan's corner, and Evan tried to pay attention to her and not the forty watching eyes.  
"Hey, I can see you're nervous," she said, "do you think it would be easier to do the speech after the final ends, in the twenty free minutes?"  
Evan nodded. "Yeah. Sorry. This wasn't supposed to happen."  
"It's okay," she said. "You'll do great. I won't mark down any points or anything."  
Evan nodded, and as suddenly as she'd appeared, she was gone.  
Jared moved his chair closer to Evan and rested three fingers on his arm in the warm space just below his elbow. It was a simple movement but Evan heard the message loud and clear. _I'm here for you. It's okay. I care about you. If you need any help, just ask._  
Evan let his pinky finger rest against Jared's free hand. It was saying _Sorry for breaking down. Thanks for not being weird about it._  
A shift of Jared's hand against Evan's was him wrapping Evan in a warm embrace, his curls squished under Evan's chin, their breaths in sync.  
Being gay in any way in Texas without being clocked was exhausting. But straight people would never understand the meaning behind eyes meeting in the halls for slightly too long, fingertips brushing wrists while passing papers back, two pinkies brushing together while the teacher is speaking, eyes darting from eyes to mouth to cheekbone to temple to forehead to eyebrows to mouth, legs thrown on each others' laps instead of being on the floor, fingers skimming their hand or arm or waist on "accident."  
Next to him, Alana was braiding Sabrina's hair. Perfectly heterosexual until you noticed the way her fingers skimmed the back of her neck or her jawline or shoulders or back as she worked. No one would have noticed it except for other gay people.  
"Zoe's speech was really good," Jared said.  
"Yeah, and Sara," Evan added.  
"Yeah. Carter did great too."  
"Carter." Evan scanned his foggy memory. "Oh, he did the, uh, marijuana one, right?"  
"Yeah."  
"Yeah, he was good."  
Jared took his hand off of Evan's arm to pull some bandaids out of his bag and wrap them around his fingers, which were picked and bitten raw, most of them bleeding. Evan felt bad for not noticing.  
Jared put the bandaids on and then turned Evan's arm over, placing bandaids over where he'd been picking, too.  
Touch starved gays. It wasn't just a stereotype.  
Three minutes to the bell, the class began crowding at the door as if they were the opposite of osmosis, crowding into a small space and leaving the rest empty.  
Evan sat on the table, fidgeting with the spinner ring on his finger, staring down. He didn't notice Zoe Murphy making her way towards the door until she was right in front of him.  
"Hey," she said.  
Evan brushed his hair out of his face. "Hey."  
"I just wanted to say that, um, I've been in the exact place you were in. Last year I had to present a poem I wrote in front of my class and I freaked out and started crying. But you're an incredible writer and you make really strong points, so. You'll do great. I believe in you."  
Evan gave her a shaky smile. "Thanks, Zoe."  
"Of course," she nodded.  
Evan glanced down at her hands. She'd been picking the skin around her nails, just like Jared did, similar to what Evan did.  
The bell rang, and Evan organised his notes before going up to the podium in front of the nearly-empty classroom.  
"Sorry," he said, "The stress of being the coolest person in the room really got to me."  
Ms. Towers smiled at him. "I know how that feels."  
Zoe, who was still packing up her bag, gave him a thumbs-up. From where he was sitting on the table playing Tetris, Jared shot him the sign for "I love you." Evan smiled at both of them.  
"Whenever you're ready," Ms. Towers said.  
Evan cleared his throat and started spinning his ring around his finger. He took a breath.  
"I did my essay on why it should be illegal to refuse to let gay or trans couples go to prom together."

His voice didn't shake. 

**Author's Note:**

> paige i find it very unlikely that you're browsing the kleinsen tag on ao3 dot com but if u are. thank u


End file.
